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Updated: June 13, 2025
And she had the great advantage in life so, at least, she considered it of being a theosophist. Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again Petite Fille de Tombouctou she had felt she must get out of Europe, if only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's refusal to go.
And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "Petite Fille de Tombouctou." There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing.
Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide in Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself.
"I am not going back to London for a very long time," she replied with energy. "You will stay here many weeks?" "Months, perhaps. And perhaps I shall travel on into the desert. Yes, I must do that." "If we followed the white road into the desert, and went on and on for many days, we should come at last to Tombouctou," said Batouch. "But very likely we should be killed by the Touaregs.
"Mademoiselle Suzanne is like the first day after the fast of Ramadan," replied the poet, majestically. "No one would harm her were she to wander alone to Tombouctou." The prospect drew from Suzanne a startled gulp. Batouch placed himself tenderly at her side and they set out, Domini walking behind with Hadj. The village was full of the wan presage of the coming of the moon.
There was a far-off, fatal look in his eyes as he spoke, those blue eyes which seemed at all times to see something that others could not see. And again the sense of an intangible, illusive, yet very real mystery of the East, which he had felt for a moment before landing, oppressed Stephen, as if he had inhaled too much smoke from the black incense of Tombouctou.
"I don't know," she answered. And she wondered and could not tell. "There is the Villa Anteoni." Batouch lifted his hand and pointed. They had turned aside from the way to Tombouctou, left the village behind them, and come into a narrow track which ran parallel to the desert. The palm trees rustled on their right, the green corn waved, the narrow cuttings in the earth gleamed with shallow water.
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously: "If only Rades had not sung Petite Fille de Tombouctou!" That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such music was cruel when life went wrong. "Why won't he come?
Boldly now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion. Algiers affected her somewhat as the Petite Fille de Tombouctou had affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude Heath.
Then there was a babel of voices, a torrent of cries full of barbaric gaiety. Before it had died out of Domini's ears she stood by the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie. Rather militant than priestly, raised high on a marble pedestal, it faced the long road which, melting at last into a faint desert track, stretched away to Tombouctou.
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